“Let’s Bring Innovation into the Bottom of the Pyramid Together”: Introducing the Anti-Poverty Innovation Approach

Life without poverty is a top priority of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While research on poverty reduction has generated knowledge on the nature, antecedents, and effects of poverty (e.g. Alkire and Santos, 2014; Sen, 1981), as well as the management and governance of antipoverty initiatives (e.g. Zhou et al., 2018), the challenges of poverty reduction have received relatively little attention in the innovation literature. The gap is notable because of the paradox of prosperity, which refers to the problem that the current approach to poverty reduction relies on the “trickle down” effect of economic development, ignoring the fact that economic development doesn’t naturally alleviate poverty via “trickle down” effects. Instead, increasing prosperity tends to concentrate into the hands of a few members of society (Foroohar, 2016). As a result, economic development often fails to generate sustainable prosperity, and even exacerbates the problem in some cases (Christensen et al., 2019). Resolving the prosperity paradox hinges on increasing the inclusivity of innovation ecosystems because innovation is a key driver of economic development. If innovation eco-systems are more inclusive, then the prosperity of those innovations are more likely to be broadly shared (George et al., 2012a). Accordingly, we draw from several theoretical perspectives to propose a novel Anti-Poverty Innovation (API) approach that empowers the “Bottom of the Pyramid” (BoP) individuals through innovation, meeting UNSDGs of poverty reduction, endogenous development, and community prosperity. Overall, this research generates new insights on innovation, the prosperity paradox, and poverty reduction to contribute to the achievement of inclusive global sustainable development.